Development charity’s new co-chairs signal shift from controversial sponsor a child scheme launched in 1972 to long-term grassroots funding
Child sponsorship schemes that allow donors to handpick children to support in poor countries can carry racialised, paternalistic undertones and need to be transformed, the newly appointed co-chief executives of ActionAid UK said as they set out to “decolonise” the organisation’s work.
ActionAid began in 1972 by finding sponsors for schoolchildren in India and Kenya, but Taahra Ghazi and Hannah Bond have launched their co-leadership this month with the goal of shifting narratives around aid from sympathy towards solidarity and partnership with global movements.
That will involve looking at how ActionAid UK’s work is funded by working with teams in Africa, Asia and Latin America so they can help shape a model that reflects what the communities they work with need.
Ghazi said: “Most of our supporters are relatively well-off people and many of them are white, so if you’re asking them to choose a picture of a brown or black child and choose the country they come from – effectively, that’s a very transactional relationship and quite a paternalistic one. We recognise that the current child sponsorship model reflects a different time.”
